Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) arrived in Washington earlier today to begin 4 days of meetings with President Obama. As mentioned in my post yesterday, understanding cooperation between the United States and China is crucial for both countries.According to this article, "China and the United States are now each other's second largest trading partner. The two-way trade between the two countries is expected to top 380 billion U.S. dollars in 2010. China has been the fastest-growing major export market of the United States for nine consecutive years."
However, political gamesmanship in the U.S. seems to be more important to some American leaders. John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives declined to attend a dinner for Hu which was intended to be non-partisan. Boehner's refusal to attend the dinner doesn't seem to be based on any specific problems with China, but is more likely a continuation of his extreme political partisanship. Boehner has previously refused White House invitations to state dinners with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
The Chinese place huge emphasis on the concept of guanxi 关系, which doesn't have a perfect English translation, but is usually translated as "face." Maintaining face is crucial in Chinese society and causing others loss of face is to be avoided at all costs. If the Chinese government hosted a welcome dinner for President Obama, there would be no doubt that every Chinese leader invited would attend because to do otherwise would be considered insulting and cause loss of face to the Chinese government as well as to Obama. Boehner's decision not to attend Hu's state dinner was probably motivated by a desire to cause loss of face to President Obama rather than President Hu or China. In reality, however, the only face lost should be Boehner's own for allowing petty political partisanship to take precedence over international diplomacy.
While China's one-party form of government certainly has its flaws, the United States' highly partisan party system certainly isn't perfect either - especially when party leaders can't even cooperate in attending a welcoming dinner for an important foreign leader.
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